Twisted Roots
by Nutcase friend
Summary: Set after GOTG vol.2, only a year or something later. New day, new mission, new trouble. Invited to the planet Aedi for a party before their mission, (with Rocket and Groot getting into their usual trouble) another new threat is twisting its shoulders to spring. Hoping that this one doesn't go for too long, coz I have other stories to finish. mostly from Rocket's point of veiw.


A clashing sound awoke Rocket from whatever sleep he could get. He mumbled, then rubbed his matted fur and scrambled out of his small bed, the sound of the engine of the ship a comfort to him. He stumbled down the steps to the lower compartments, and again considered moving his room down to this area, closer to the engine room where his closer distance might one day save them.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around, still trying to rub the sleep from his eyes.  
Something metallic shifted again, and he spotted the movement near the compression box.

His ears twitched and he smiled a little, then crouched onto all fours and crept along the grating of the floor towards the pile of coils and boxes that had fallen from the opened storage unit above. He could smell the plant humanoid only inches away from him, and launched over the top of the pile with a small war-cry.  
Little Groot gave a little scream as Rocket tackled him, but it soon turned to laughter as furred arms grabbed at a bark-covered body. Rocket sat back onto his butt and pulled the little plant into his chest while tickling him.

Humanoid plants like Groot were connected and had nerves everywhere, like most creatures, and although their bark was tough they had incredible senses, like whiskers on a creature like Rocket, but all over the body instead of just on his face. Groot laughed and laughed until his large brown eyes were watering, trying to push his adoptive furred father away with arms and root extensions that crawled from his arms and out of his torso.

Eventually Rocket sat back and released the tree gremlin, who escaped and hid behind a box.

Rocket looked around at the carnage. The storage unit hadn't been broken open, so Rocket figured Groot had simply picked the lock.

"What were you trying to find?" Rocket asks in the direction that Groot had run. He stood, and dug around the pile.

"Boy we've got to get rid of some of this." He mumbles, throwing aside a part that didn't even belong to this model. He could modify it, sure, but they had plenty spares of that part anyway. It might be good on market though.

But that still didn't explain what Groot was looking for.

"I am Groot." Groot says from around a piece of machinery, in his adorable tiny voice.

"A Quarter Disk? Why?" Even as Rocket asked, he rummaged further into the pile to look for the object.

"I am Groot."

"A surprise? For who?"

"I am Groot."

Rocket shook his head with a sigh. Vague little… plant! 'Everyone' had been his answer. What was that even supposed to mean? But soon he saw the shine of the Quarter Disk which was also almost useless to the ship, and grabbed it.

He heard footsteps coming down the metallic stairs, and looked up as he was pulling the disk out from amongst the chaos.

A dishevelled Quill appeared from above, and Rocket tried not to look him in the eye.

Ever since Ego…they'd grown stronger as friends, but Rocket still felt something twitch inside his heart, a guilt so deep he's not sure if he'd never be able to see himself, or anyone else, the same way again. Only his love for Groot was solid to him. And even then, horrific memories of how Groot had looked on Yondu's mutineer ship, wet and dripping in ravenger garb, hurt… Groot was his best friend and now he was like the crew's own child, and he had already almost been killed so many times.

"Rocket, what's going on?" he asked.

"Groot went on a destructive mission of his own." Rocket looked around casually, and grunted.

"Like father like son."

"If you want to talk about father and son Quill-," Rocket was halfway through the quip when Quill pulled the finger at him silently.

"What parts are these?" Quill said tiredly, scratching at a smooth bare chest while putting the rude gesture away.

"Useless ones, that's what, except to sell off." Rocket picked up another part and threw it over where he'd tossed the other ones deemed rubbish.

"What was Groot even..?" Quill doesn't bother to finish.

"I have no idea. He says it's a 'surprise for everyone'." Rocket made an 'oh' sound when he saw an interesting part that could connect to the Adron Enforcer as an add-on. "But anyway, you can go back to bed now, lover-boy."

Quill snorts a laugh, "Don't stay up to late. It'll be a bad example for Groot."

"Just as much as your couplings with greeny-girl-Gamora." Rocket retorted back. "I swear I'm gonna start having to wear earmuffs, and my rooms not even near yours."

"What the f-… how can you..?"

"My ears are infinitely better than yours Quill, an unfortunate advantage sometimes." Rocket said.

"Gross, dude!"

"I don't listen on purpose! It's your fault for falling for her!" Rocket says, half-laughing. Quill smiles and rubs his eyes.

"I'm going to go, and pretend this conversation never happened." he then turns and walks up the stairs again, his muscled back leaving the scene. Rocket can see why Gamora fell for the guy. He's an asshole, but is fit, and even though Rocket isn't human, or anything close, he knows that Quill is considered attractive.  
Rocket tries not to think about it, and digs through the pile more, starting to create two other piles as he goes; sellers and keepers.

But eventually he finds his paws have stopped searching and he's standing completely still.

He will never be loved the way Quill is loved by Gamora.

It's a startling fact he's never realised before, but it's there. Only Yondu ever understood Rocket completely. The others are closer to him than anyone else, apart from Groot, had ever been. Support, love, everything…but not love like…that. Rocket knows he'd never felt an attraction to someone, but knowing that no one would ever have an attraction to him anyway was, in a sense, painful.

Little monster. Rodent. Mutant. Beast. Freak.

No one would want to hold that.

Rocket shook his head of the thought as he heard Groot crawling closer. Twig came up and started gripping gently onto Rocket's leg, and then yawned slowly.

"It's way past your bed time. You can finish whatever it is after some more sleep." Rocket could have stayed up for a few more hours, but he knew he needed as much rest as he could get. Sometimes on a mission, they wouldn't get sleep for a period that wasn't healthy. Not just days, but a week, longer. None of the crew were human, so sleep wasn't needed _as much_ as the mortals of Terra, but eventually a body starts to betray you without recharging.  
Groot lifted his bark arms to be picked up, and Rocket rolled his eyes before scooping him onto the crook of his arm.  
Groot was asleep before he even made it back to their room.  
Rocket placed Groot on his pillow, then crawled in himself, one paw covering over the root-creature as a blanket, while pulling his own blanket up around him.

* * *

Rocket was up and dressed and sitting in a pilot seat before any of the others were up. Groot was still asleep on his bed last time he saw, but he could have gotten up to continue his secret project by now. Rocket gave a stretch in the seat and relaxed. They were still a good hour away from where they were supposed to be, and the others would be up soon anyway.

The stars surrounding the ship glimmered of the shiny surfaces in the ship, and Rocket felt completely submerged in them. Groot loved going out in a bubble-forcefield suit and floating among them, and could gaze at them for hours, happily tracing them with his woody fingers.

"Good morning, puppy."

He sighed. "Hello, bug."

Mantis tittered a laugh, which Groot always loved to hear. But the plant alien didn't hear it this time.

"I heard a strange noise last night." Mantis says, sitting in the other pilot chair, and remembering not to touch any of the controls under Rocket's strict instruction.

"Groot was looking for something and caused a hell of a mess." Rocket grumbled. He reminded himself that he would still have to go through that pile as soon as Quill took the controls. He would have to figure out where to put them all so no one like Drax messed up his system. The hulking green, blue, red monstrous beast of a humanoid male could break things without trying, and did not by any means have deft fingers. He also had little regard for fragile parts. Actually he had little regard for anything delicate. Him calling Mantis ugly was proof enough of that.

Rocket knew a lot of things, and Mantis being quite attractive compared to many Galactians was one of them. Large eyes, soft face and pale skin, even those antennae, would be precious on the slave market.

Rocket smirked at his own thought.

Mantis saw the smirk, and gave a small smile of her own, and her fingers twitched, but then relaxed.

"I saw that." Rocket stated, and Mantic immediately tucked both hands in between her thighs, looking away, ashamed.

"I'm sorry. I…I've been trying."

"You're doing pretty well, so don't go getting upset." Rocket reassured. He knew she had been trying very hard not to automatically reach for someone to feel their feelings. She still had twitches, or would reach halfway to a person then pull back. Her control was getting much better, but Drax's enthusiasm for it was not a great help in training her out of it.

"Thank you. You're doing pretty well too."

Rocket's ears flattened and he looked at her, an eye-brow raised. "What do you mean?" He says quietly.

Mantis suddenly looks startled, and is about to apologize again, when Rocket holds up a paw and says,

"Just explain. What did you mean?"

She faltered, opening and closing her mouth a few times before she answered. "You're…there's still a veil, but its thinner…around your…you."

"Oh great, philosophy lessons from a space bug." Rocket says. Although he understood what she meant, he ignored it. He didn't need this kind of emotional strain at the moment.

Mantis said no more for a while, but she brushed a thumb over the back of her other hand slowly, staring at the stars around them, the light of them being reflected in her huge black eyes.

Rocket wasn't as fine with silence as he once was. These days there was always talking, or Quill's good music humming from the cassette player installed into the ship. Drax was always thundering about something funny, when once upon a time he would sit silently and mull over the pain in his life. Gamora, too. Groot was mostly silent before, but now he picked up habits like how Quill's ship picked up grime, because he was only a few years old. It wasn't exactly speech he used, but his presence was just a little…noisier. Not how he moved, but how he hummed or whined or tittered, because he couldn't really laugh. He just seemed to have more things to make noise about.

Rocket had to admit, even though their life had been a hell of a lot more dangerous since they joined Quill, Gamora and Drax, their life had been miles better.

Mantis and Yondu had been a strange little switch-up for it as well.

Rocket tried not to think about Yondu.

"The stars make your eyes look freakier." Says a deep rasping voice, though amused.

Rocket sighed the second time that day. "Good to see you're in a complimenting mood, Drax." He says.

"I was talking to Mantis." Drax replies, his thunder-like form appearing just next to Rocket's flight chair.

"Doesn't change the fact." Rocket mumbles with a smirk, as their ship passed through an Astor cloud, little pieces of rock and dust bouncing off the form. Rocket slowed  
down a tad, in case they came across a particularly temperamental shard. After all, Quill doesn't like scratches on it.

"Thank you." Mantis says in response to Drax's comment. "Does that mean I'm even more ugly?"

"Yeah, just as ugly as Drax is intelligent." Rocket says with a laugh. Both of them were thus confused, trying to figure out what he meant, making Rocket smile wider. Having two (three if they counted Groot) socially inept creatures on the ship meant you could really have some fun.

A few minutes later Quill and Gamora appeared, and with Quill taking the helm, Rocket went back to where the chaos had happened that night.

The piles were the same, but he heard the scraping of metal, and the small struggling grunts of Groot. Rocket walked around a pile to see movement amidst one of them. He peered closer, and then quickly jumped forward as he saw Groot was stuck, and trying to release himself. His grunts were mixed with whimpers.  
Rocket carefully grabbed the multiple bits of metal and slowly pulled them separate, until Groot crawled out, breathing heavily, whimpering and shuddering.

"Okay that's it." Rocket said, as tenderly as he could, "you don't come back here without _me_ , alright? You get stuck, you yell."

Groot nodded, his arms clutched to his barked chest, but Rocket saw a tear roll. He sighed worriedly, and sat on the grated floor. "Come here," he said, and Groot crawls into his lap slowly, and then Rocket lifts him to his chest and hugs him, patting his tiny back. "There, you're okay now. You should've cried out, I would have heard you."

"I am Groot."

"I know you're trying to do things on your own, but you might get hurt. You're still young."

It took a few minutes for Groot to go back to normal again, then ran off excitedly to one of the junk piles and started looking through it again. Rocket watched him for a while, scratching at the back of his neck. He then stretched his arms and stood up, walking to the main pile that he hadn't gone through yet, and went to work. He threw one piece into one small pile, and another into the other.

It was little under an hour to go through everything, because he did repairs along the way, and slowly ate some breakfast while he worked. He wasn't in a particular hurry, but Groot was, apparently. He was another reason Rocket's work was slow. He was constantly tugging at Rockets leg to ask if there was a particular part, or would go through the rubbish-part pile to look for something in particular.

Rocket was growing increasingly curious as to what the root creature was making, but didn't try ask again. He briefly thought about sneaking and following him to the separate part of the ship that he kept disappearing to, and see for himself what it was, but he resisted. He would just have to be patient and believe in the baby tree alien.

But he still made it abundantly clear that if Groot felt as if he was in any kind of danger, he was to yell, distinguishable words or not.  
As Rocket threw the very last piece of junk into a crate, he felt a change in the ship. He heard the engine change down, and the pressure surrounding it felt heavier.

"Groot!" he called, and a few moments later, Groot appeared from the compartment he kept going into. Rocket closed it off for him, and wrote a note for the others not to go in there, sticking it to the door. Then he turned to the little tree and said, "You can work on it later, but we've got a party to get to."

Groot crawled his way up to Rocket's shoulder, and they went up to the bridge. As Rocket predicted, they could see the planet Aedi before them. Just in time, the ship started to shudder as it got close to the Atmosphere.

"Another high-and-mighty planet to serve. This party better be worth it Quill." Rocket said, jumping into his co-pilot seat.

"I hope they have melted cheese. I've been getting cravings for it again."

Rocket didn't even bother to ask. Quill was the one who referenced to his own planet the most, out of all of them, and it could be a confusing pile of bullshit most days.

"Remember to behave, both of you." Gamora said seriously. "Aedian's are a mystical beings and it is best not to be loud around them." She looks meaningfully at Drax before continuing. "There will be other beings there, but we don't know who."

"Wonder if Iesha the golden globe-head will be there." Quill said, and Rocket laughed.

"I'll ask her if she has any spare batteries." Rocket manages to wheeze out as he laughs, and both Drax and Quill laugh loudly. Gamora taps her fingers on her arm rest of the seat and tilts her head at the raccoon, and Mantis tries not to smile.

Like Gamora said, when they landed, it was not Aedian's they first see when they land in a docking sight. In fact, the city is loud and bustling, so many species walking back and forth and going into stores and stalls. Some hoisted up poles with lights attached, others lit torches with blue flames, and musical instruments of every strange and wonderful kind were being tuned in the background of it all.

"Mystical? Best not be loud?" Rocket asks Gamora with a laugh, indicating to the crowds.

"This isn't where our party is." Gamora states easily, trying not to smile herself. Rocket curses inside himself. The preparation's going on around him seemed like the kind of party he would want to go to, with betting and drinking and challenging beings much larger than him to all sorts of challenges. Mechanical ones mostly. If there was drag racing nearby, he would be the best quick-engineer on the block, and he could win bags worth of units in a few short hours. He could see Groot on his shoulder looking longingly to the fountains, and around at the figures, particularly at the ones who seemed to be practicing dancing, watching them carefully as the crew walked through the mess of people.

"It's a shame Kraglin can't be here to see this." Rocket states, looking around.

Quill nods with a solemn face. "We'll bring him back a few souvenirs, so he can stick them on his console."

"Maybe a battery or two." Rocket said quietly to Drax, and winks. Drax laughs, and even more so as Gamora pulls Rockets ear roughly.

"Ouch! What?" Rocket said, but laughs as he rubs his ear, sniggering every few minutes afterwards.

"We're to meet the tailors in a separate building closer to the core of the city."

"Tailors?" Rocket asks.

"There's special attire requirement inside the cores higher class celebration." Mantis said, almost giddy with excitement.

"Wait, wait, _attire requirements!?_ " Rocket exclaims, almost stopping among pushing of legs and dangling hands.

"No one's keen on the idea Rocket." Quill says, checking the hologram map before him, not looking back to see Rocket's unimpressed scowl. "But if we want this job, we'll do what we have to."

"This mission sounds more like a social event." Rocket grumbles, and Groot cuddles into the side of his neck as he sits on Rockets shoulder.

It turned out that the attire was not too extravagant. Just extra shiny armour-like garments that pinched in areas, but Rocket looked in the spotless mirror and didn't see anything repulsive or ridiculous. His armour-like outfit was blessedly a deep red, a colour that he didn't look bad in. Drax was in deep blue, and only had a plain blue vest to cover his torso. Rockets was similar, and clearly the knowledge that he had fur instead of skin or scales had been taken into account.

"How did they even get the fitting right?" Rocket asks Quill, who was in a Silvery coloured garment, also looking himself over in the mirror, constantly checking his ass.

"We sent general information ahead at their request." Quill said, again running a hand over his backside, and Rocket rolled his eyes.

"You look as good as a polished console, can we get out of here now?" Rocket said, and Quill nods with a pleased pout, impressed at his own looks. "You're lucky I'm not any taller, or your cheek would be stinging by now." He said at Quill's smug look. Quill makes a face at him, before they leave the mirrored change rooms.

"You look splendid." Said the Aedian tailor flatly, little emotion crossing his face. Aedian's had tight-skinned faces, usually dulled shades of green or grey, and elongated skulls out the back. They wore robes usually, and were never known for their battle skills. They were an intellectual race of learning and history.

No wonder Rocket felt out of place here. He had a general knowledge of all the planets, sure, but only enough to help him on a job or mission. But these guys knew almost _everything_ there was to know about _everywhere._ And so they found Rocket a slight interest which he did not return.

"Your female companions are equally prepared." He said, and walks away, in a creepily even way.

The building they were in was something you saw in the old comic books that Quill thought he hid cleverly on the ship. It was tall and silvery, shimmering when the sunlight hits it, looking like a spike out of the centre of the hilly city. The buildings around it were all manner of shapes and sizes, of completely different materials and colour. It wasn't anything like Xandar, where everything had a unity to it. Everything here was different and new when you turned your head, and there was the most diverse population living here that Rocket rarely saw, except maybe on Nowhere, or other trading posts.

The core building however, had only Aedian's. They allowed anyone to live and work on the planet, but rules and laws were strictly run and decided by them, exclusive parties thrown by them, and the presence of others in their core building decided by them. They were still the head of the race. Considering they weren't a physical race, they had to rely on others to mine their most precious commodity; a radioactive ore that is the only known cure to Hlavac's disease. It was so highly prized around the galaxy that it was the only thing they needed to trade, and it made their whole planet prosperous. No wonder there was so many who immigrated here. They all wanted a piece of the wealth, and because the Aedian's had little attachment to material things, they took little of the wealth themselves. It explained the lack of slums in the city.

The three males were led down a sparklingly clean corridor the colour of clouds, with golden flecks in the stone. Rocket had to admit it, The Aedian race was plain to look at, but they had an extravagant taste, even though it was the only rich building they had. He wondered if they even built it, or maybe the races below did it for them in appreciation. This race took in a lot of inter-galactic asylum seekers because they could afford it.

They were led down some stairs to a huge plateaued room similar to a ballroom, which had stairs leading down from the opposite side to match the ones they had just come down. Rocket had never actually been inside a ballroom, or that's what Quill called them, but he'd stolen from a few rich pricks around the galaxy, and they all had a room like this.

In the huge open area were possibly hundreds of individuals. Most of them were Aedian, but there was many who weren't, and all but Aedian's wore either the glittering, splendid armour-suits, or the feminine forms of the room had extravagant long dresses, each more complicated and elaborate than the last, and all were bright colours.  
Rocket spotted about thirty pieces of gold or metal he could have stolen within the first twenty seconds. The mechanisms of the lights also seemed interesting, and he tried not to strain his neck looking around at them all.

"Wow." Quill said, slightly taken back at the sight. "This is a real nice party. Looks like a French renaissance painting."

The Aedian Tailor looked at Quill, impossible to pick his emotion, but he nodded once in recognition.

"I'm gonna split as soon as I take that guys prosthetic arm." Rocket says, nodding towards a non-Aedian who was laughing quietly with some of another race, the metal of his replacement arm gleaming.

The Aedian tailer turned to him quickly, clearly about to object.

"Don't worry," Quill says quickly, and slightly kicks Rocket in the side, "He won't actually steal it."

"Yeah that would require effort." Rocket says, but as a female passed by him, he nicked a few jewels from her dress and tucked them into his pocket without anyone noticing.  
 _  
This might not be so bad_ he thinks to himself, as he makes his way over to what looked like a table of free food.

He was just about to reach for some sweet looking fruit when the room went quiet all of a sudden. He looked around, expecting everyone to be looking at him disapprovingly, which naturally would be the usual cause of the quiet, but when he spotted it was something behind and above him that had caught their attention, he turned to see. He couldn't help but stare silently with everyone else.

But tried ever so hard not to laugh.

Gamora and Mantis were dressed in the most splendid dresses out of all of them. Mantis was in a cream that worked with her skin, and Gamora in a shimmering blue which reminded Rocket of the galaxy sky itself, when you fly among it.

But Gamora was clearly trying her hardest to contain her uncomfortableness. She moved in it fairly well, but Rocket bet any units that she was terrified out of her wits that someone might try to attack her.

Groot was perched on her shoulder, and when he spotted Rocket, climbed down from her and ran towards him, people making way for the little strange walking plant. Rocket knelt down to pick him up, and placed him on his own shoulder.

Noise once again resumed in the hall, and Rocket made his way over to where Gamora and Mantis were being met by Quill and Drax. He had a thousand japes tickling his fur and he couldn't wait to see how pissed he could make Gamora about this. She had never looked so beautiful, but also never so vulnerable.  
he made it through the multiple legs of the crowd, and reached his friends.

He opened his mouth to say the best joke he could think of, but Gamora clamped her fingers around his snout and hissed at him,

"You, say nothing about this, _ever._ "

In a way he'd seen this coming, so when she released him, he stayed silent for her.

"I am Groot," said Groot, and Rocket turned to him with a raised eyebrow.

"Huh. What do you know?" He turned to Gamora again. "He says you look pretty."

Gamora smiled at Groot sweetly, and rubbed his cheek with a thumb tenderly. Groot was lucky he was such a baby, or he wouldn't have received such a sweet smile.

Gamora only had that face reserved for Groot and Quill.

But as Rocket predicted, the party was quiet and boring. The drink was too sweet and didn't even make him tipsy.

Groot was visibly growing bored as well. He was getting cheeky and dangerously restless, playing with food and terrorising some of the young offspring of the guests.  
Quill pulled Rocket aside several hours after the party started, holding a scowling Groot.

"Look, it's going to be a while before we're allowed to leave, so maybe you should take George of the Jungle here for a walk outside." He said, handing Groot down to him. Rocket took Groot onto his shoulder where the baby tree man gripped on, feeling better away from Quill's slight agitation.

"Good. We'll go and have way better fun than all you shiny asses." Rocket said, sticking his tongue out as Quill turns to leave. He sighs when the Terran is out of earshot.

"Sent out for a walk. Doing wonders to our dignities eh Groot?" Rocket says, and Groot whines slightly, watching his father Quill walk away sadly.  
Quill looked out one of the crystal clear windows, and saw something whizz by. His ears perked and he stepped closer. The window was higher than his head, so he told Groot to hang on, then gripped onto divots in the wall and climbed up until he could peer out comfortably.  
Another few things sped by the window, and he could just hear the sound of cheers.

"Well, maybe we actually _will_ have a better night." Rocket laughs to himself, Groot bouncing with excitement on his shoulder, as both of them looked down to the street where rotten and dirty pilots were prepping for drag racing.


End file.
